


quarrel

by haganenobeato



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Gen, Royai - Freeform, character study of sorts of when things go south, its basically them arguing lmao
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-21
Updated: 2017-08-21
Packaged: 2018-12-18 07:49:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11869845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haganenobeato/pseuds/haganenobeato
Summary: They say you always hurt the ones you love the most - so where do Roy and Riza stand when they don't see eye to eye?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Cross-posted on tumble under capthawkeye; Prompted by my good friend Ask-Royai-lty!

She turned a heel towards the door, wanting to leave before level-headedness was lost between them. The music from Madame Christmas’s bar was muffled by an oak door, all she had to do was walk out of it and it would be done. He would fume and burn out before they showcased their regrets.

Roy snatched her wrist. A low growl erupted from the depth of his chest. “I didn’t say you could leave.”

“This isn’t us.” 

“Isn’t it?” His voice elevated in crescendo. “Isn’t this what we’ve always been? Killers. Liars. Manipulators. Usurpers.” 

“Stop…”  She pleaded, but his fury wouldn’t yield.

“You’ve murdered  _innocents_ before, what would stop you now?” 

Riza met his eyes again; the fire in them, once intoxicating now burned her from the inside out. It would have hurt less than the knife in her back. She found her voice steadier than she expected. “Don’t bring me down to your level.“

“Is it a lie, Riza?”  

“I have done nothing but support you.” She shook her head slowly.”But this…”

With his grip tightening, he homed in on her. His towering presence backed her into the wall. “Or perhaps you’ve been nothing but a pebble in my shoe.” 

“A pebble?” 

“A hindrance. A nuisance.” 

She snatched back her wrist and found her claws. “And just where would you be without me, hmm?” She straighten her spine and pushed him back at the shoulder. He swatted her hand away, but she closed in, returning the demeaning gesture he had just put her through. “What would you have without me? You told my father you were going to take the State Alchemist exam and what would you have taken with you? Your good looks and that silver tongue can only take you so far, Mustang.” 

“You seemed to have enjoyed it thus far,” he sneered at her coldly.  “Or am I wrong?”

“You had to take advantage of the master’s daughter. Just give her a little speech, you knew she had the notes. You knew she was your key.”

“Take advantage? Don’t kid yourself.” He twirled a tendril of her hair in between his fingers tenderly. “If it wasn’t me, it’d be your next ‘savior’ who would have no trouble helping you out of your clothes.” 

A firm hand swiped across his face, a loud clap filled the temporary silence as she controlled her breathing in a feeble attempt to recuperate her level head. The years of watching each other’s back had come back to bite her and he was sinking his teeth in. He was tearing away at her most intimate spots, ripping her open. The savage knew exactly how to position his prey into submission, she’d seen it before and she was a fool for thinking he wouldn’t turn on her just because she walked by the devil’s side.

“How do you repay her? You burn the little hope she had left, the hope she believed in so childishly by scorching the desert with the smell of burning bodies. You murdered thousands more than she did. And while a murder is a murder, at least she wasn’t fooling anyone but herself. At least, Armstrong had more sense to understand the morals you hold so dear now.” Riza eyed the length of him, odium suffocating rationale. “You hypocrite.” 

Roy laughed into the air until his expression fell grim and he looked at her with the same contempt. “You’re lucky I came around. A country bumpkin scared of her own shadow. The real question is what would you have done if I hadn’t come to lift you out of that miserable existence you called life.” He calmly went over to the table in the room to pick up his forgotten glass of fine bourbon and took a silent sip. 

She stood in place, steeling herself as her nails dug into the flesh of her palms. 

“What sheep-shearing farmer would you have given your deadly secrets to?” The anger in his tenor quelled into a pensive lull and that unnerved her. “What would he do? Would he sell you out to the military? Or perhaps another alchemist, what would they have done? Admit it, I didn’t have to sweet-talk when you gave them to me so freely, so carelessly, Riza.

“What was it that you said?” He thought, tapping his chin - each ticking second mocking her. “Even into hell, was it? Where is that loyalty now?” 

She narrowed her eyes, swallowing the lump that had formed in her throat. “Don’t you see? We’re already there.” 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Riza comes back in for the kill

_“Even into hell, was it? Where is that loyalty now?”_

_She narrowed her eyes, swallowing the lump that had formed in her throat. “Don’t you see? We’re  already there.”_

* * *

“You’re mistaken,” he snided. “This is hardly hell. Only Central.”  

She took in a deep breath. A sign. The others were the clenching of her fist, the tightening of her neck and the reddening edges of her eyes. She’d started this match and he’d win it. He shouldn’t take pride in cornering his adjutant, but the stakes were high and the vacillation between what’s necessary and what’s morally right  would prove her uselessness if she decided not to adhere to correct one.

“You can demean me, berate me, belittle me,” she spoke calmly and he wondered if she had molded back into her proclivity of subservience Roy knew she loyally upheld. “Project all your insecurities, your blame,  your shame. It’s no stranger to me; you’re no different from him.”

“Ah yes, your father.” He leaned into the edge of the furniture; a hand resting next to him for support. “The man who left you to me like a possession in his dying breath.

At first, I thought it was because he somehow felt some semblance of love for you as he met his end. After all, the man seemed to live for alchemy and suddenly felt the regret of not caring for his daughter.” He chuckled darkly into his glass. “But, come to find out, it was more for what was on your back rather than you - how cruel. He couldn’t be bothered to continue breathing for you.”

The ice twinkled in the light as he swirled the glass in his free hand.

He turned his back on her, squaring his shoulders to the table centered in the private parlor. He gripped the glass stopper of the brown liquid he’d take comfort in that night and poured. The ice clinked, filling the void in the room. A smirk curled the corner of his lip and he said, “You can leave now.”

Roy heard her release a trembling sigh and her footfalls followed. He froze for a sliver of a second as they fell closer, rather than retracting from where she stood. Riza came into view, skirting the border of the table until she was directly opposite of him. The golden flecked eyes darkened into cavernous depths of burnt sepia.

“Are you dipping so low because I, at least, had a father I knew?”

He frowned.

“I knew my mother too.” Her hand ghosted over the surface of the mahogany, stroking it with thoughts of endearment. “I remember her touch and how she smelled. Bergamot and the lightest hint of honey. She would hold me on days that I was scared, sad, or because she was inclined to out of motherly love. She would hold me tight, her loving embrace so warm. And after she was gone-” her eyes lifted to pierce through him, “- I still had her memories to go by. Even as father descended into madness.

Oh, I pity and sympathize with those who have never felt a true parent’s love.”

Roy hummed in response, opting not to give her the satisfaction of a verbal rebuttal that would serve as a childish remark. The extraction of her talons nearly surprised him.

The Hawk’s Eye missed nothing. “You’ve grown awfully quiet,  _sir_.” She strode forward with calculated and deliberately slow steps  back around. He would not acknowledge the acrimonious inflection to his address.

“Your jabs aren’t impressing anyone.”

“Color me impressed as it tames that tongue I enjoy so much. Has it stunned you to the point you have no more to say?”

Roy eyed her as she circled around him, mirroring  her preying namesake

“You look rather tired. Are you resting well? Or are the terrors still keeping you up?” She paused for a moment before she ensued, as it slowly dawned on him what he had inadvertently unleashed.  “The guilt of a mass murderer turned empathetic. Or was it the guilt of something else.”

Roy’s finger twitched against the condensation of his drink. “This isn’t a game, Riza.”

“Does the murder of Maes still haunt you? At night when you used to beg me to hold you. Or how about when you’ve failed your subordinates? Jean’s mother still blames you, you know.”

“I said this  _isn’t_  a  **game**.”

“No, but you made it one. Tell me, in your mind, have you already won? Do you have me figured out somewhere in there of the machinations of your twisted conscious? Did you think that I’d just take it?!”

“I expected better than-”

“You expected someone less than human.” Riza interjected, prodding a finger into his shoulder and he closed his eyes to mitigate the agitation. “And darling, I’m sorry I’m not half the monster you are.”

She moved in closer to him, closer than he could have expected from her in that moment. Her hands reached his tie and she began to adjust the knot sitting on his neck and he froze in the spontaneity of such a intimate action. He watched her in silence as the din of his anger and remorse reverberated in his head,  severing the calm mental ambiance he had reserved for moments like this.

But never with her.

Roy fully expected her cooperation or, at the very least, play into it. The Queen held her own against her own king. In some miscalculated play on his part, she managed to triumph him in his own game with only a moment of hesitance and even that didn’t hinder the success of her moves.

As her nimble hands fixed the neckwear accessory, Roy realized this was a power play of his own caliber.

She answered the unspoken rhetorical question to himself, patting the shell of his tie and subsequently taking a few paces back. “It seems like your memory has lapsed and you’ve forgotten my relation to your mentor. Your silence speaks volumes, sir.

You’ve turned your back on me, but I’ve been watching it this entire time and you’ve hardly had the initiative to look back to understand what I can be capable of.”

His eyes followed her as she gathered her coat into one arm. The lack of words frustrated him more than he could imagine.  

“Consider this my resignation.”

In a moment of short-sighted desperation, he grappled her arm to delay the departure he wasn’t expecting, “You’ll regret walking out of here like this. Reconsider.”

Riza bore her eyes into him and then at his arm, rebuffing it, and in no uncertain terms delivered the final insult. “You held me back. I could have been so much more. I would have been so much more.” she smiled radiantly. “I will be so much more, because I have nothing to lose without you. “

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I may continue this? eep.


End file.
